Pacific Mutual Building, 1972
1972
Pereira & Associates
The Pacific Mutual building was one of the last structures erected as part of the Newport Center complex in Newport Beach, CA, a “downtown” business and commercial district Pereira & Associates included as part of their master plan for Irvine Ranch. Designed in cooperation with Welton Becket & Associates, most of the structures in Newport Center adhere to an International Style aesthetic. Pereira made a significant shift from this approach with Pacific Mutual, a monolithic inverted ziggurat of concrete and tinted glass. Although only five stories, it encompasses over 230,000 square feet of office space and signaled Irvine’s growing prominence as large corporations like Pacific Mutual relocated their headquarters there from Downtown Los Angeles.
Thom photographed the building extensively, emphasizing the sweeping cast-in-place white concrete arms. But the most poetic images show the building at a distance, surrounded by grassy fields. It is a fleeting moment, when the region’s open space had yet to be razed to accommodate the region’s building boom. In one image, a single commercial tower looms behind, forecasting Newport Center’s expansion.
References:
“William Pereira,” Los Angeles Conservancy.
David Gebhard, William Leonard Pereira, American National Biography Online, 2000.
James Steele, ed., Wiliam Pereira, University of Southern California Guild Press and Balcony Press, 2002.